The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/03/01_03

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 18KB | 486 lines

London. A Room in the Palace.
 Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, LORD GREY, and MARQUIS DORSET.

Rivers    Have patience, madam; there's no doubt his majesty
    Will soon recover his accustomed health.

Grey    In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse;
    Therefore for God's sake entertain good comfort,
    And cheer his grace with quick and merry eyes.

Elizabeth    If he were dead, what would betide on me?

Grey    No other harm but loss of such a lord.

Elizabeth    The loss of such a lord includes all harms.

Grey    The heavens have blessed you with a goodly son
    To be your comforter when he is gone.

Elizabeth    Ah, he is young, and his minority
    Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester,
    A man that loves not me, nor none of you.

Rivers    Is it concluded he shall be Protector?

Elizabeth    It is determined, not concluded yet;
    But so it must be, if the king miscarry.

             Enter BUCKINGHAM and LORD STANLEY Earl of Derby.

Grey    Here come the lords of Buckingham and Derby.

Buckingham    Good time of day unto your royal grace.

Stanley    God make your majesty joyful, as you have been.

Elizabeth    The Countess Richmond, good my Lord of Derby,
    To your good prayer will scarcely say amen;
    Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she's your wife,
    And loves not me, be you, good lord, assured
    I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

Stanley    I do beseech you, either not believe
    The envious slanders of her false accusers,
    Or, if she be accused on true report,
    Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds
    From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice.

Elizabeth    Saw you the king today, my Lord of Derby?

Stanley    But now the Duke of Buckingham and I
    Are come from visiting his majesty.

Elizabeth    What likelihood of his amendment, lords?

Buckingham    Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully.

Elizabeth    God grant him health. Did you confer with him?

Buckingham    Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement
    Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers,
    And between them and my Lord Chamberlain;
    And sent to warn them to his royal presence.

Elizabeth    Would all were well! - but that will never be.
    I fear our happiness is at the height.

                     Enter RICHARD and LORD HASTINGS.

Richard    They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.
    Who is it that complains unto the king
    That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not?
    By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly
    That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.
    Because I cannot flatter and look fair,
    Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
    Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
    I must be held a rancorous enemy.
    Cannot a plain man live and think no harm
    But thus his simple truth must be abused
    With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

Grey    To who in all this presence speaks your grace?

Richard    To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.
    When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong?
    Or thee? Or thee? Or any of your faction?
    A plague upon you all! His royal grace,
    - Whom God preserve better than you would wish-
    Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing while
    But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.

Elizabeth    Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter.
    The king, on his own royal disposition,
    And not provoked by any suitor else,
    Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred,
    That in your outward action shows itself
    Against my children, brothers, and myself,
    Makes him to send that he may learn the ground
    Of your ill will, and thereby to remove it.

Richard    I cannot tell; the world is grown so bad
    That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.
    Since every Jack became a gentleman
    There's many a gentle person made a Jack.

Elizabeth    Come, come; we know your meaning, brother Gloucester.
    You envy my advancement, and my friends'.
    God grant we never may have need of you!

Richard    Meantime, God grants that I have need of you:
    Our brother is imprisoned by your means,
    Myself disgraced, and the nobility
    Held in contempt, while great promotions
    Are daily given to ennoble those
    That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.

Elizabeth    By Him that raised me to this careful height
    From that contented hap which I enjoyed,
    I never did incense his majesty
    Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been
    An earnest advocate to plead for him.
    My lord, you do me shameful injury
    Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.

Richard    You may deny that you were not the mean
    Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment.

Rivers    She may, my lord, for-

Richard    She may, Lord Rivers? Why, who knows not so?
    She may do more, sir, than denying that:
    She may help you to many fair preferments,
    And then deny her aiding hand therein,
    And lay those honours on your high desert.
    What may she not? She may - ay, marry may she-

Rivers    What, marry, may she?

Richard    What marry may she? Marry with a king,
    A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too.
    Iwis your grandam had a worser match.

Elizabeth    My lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne
    Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs.
    By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty
    Of those gross taunts that oft I have endured.
    I had rather be a country servant-maid
    Than a great queen, with this condition-
    To be so baited, scorned, and stormd at.

                    Enter old QUEEN MARGARET, behind.

    Small joy have I in being England's queen.

Margaret    [Aside.] And lessened be that small, God I beseech Him!
    Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.

Richard    What, threat you me with telling of the king?
    Tell him, and spare not. Look what I have said
    I will avouch't in presence of the king;
    I dare adventure to be sent to th' Tower.
    'Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot.

Margaret    [Aside.] Out, devil! I do remember them too well:
    Thou killed'st my husband Henry in the Tower,
    And Edward, my poor son, at Tewkesbury.

Richard    Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king,
    I was a packhorse in his great affairs,
    A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,
    A liberal rewarder of his friends.
    To royalize his blood, I spent mine own.

Margaret    [Aside.] Ay, and much better blood than his or thine.

Richard    In all which time you and your husband Grey
    Were factious for the House of Lancaster;
    And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband
    In Margaret's battle at Saint Albans slain?
    Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
    What you have been ere this, and what you are;
    Withal, what I have been, and what I am.

Margaret    [Aside.] A murd'rous villain, and so still thou art.

Richard    Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick,
    Ay, and forswore himself - which Jesu pardon-

Margaret    [Aside.] Which God revenge!

Richard    To fight on Edward's party for the crown;
    And for his meed, poor lord, he is mewed up.
    I would to God my heart were flint like Edward's,
    Or Edward's soft and pitiful like mine.
    I am too childish-foolish for this world.

Margaret    [Aside.] Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave this world,
    Thou cacodemon - there thy kingdom is.

Rivers    My lord of Gloucester, in those busy days
    Which here you urge to prove us enemies,
    We followed then our lord, our sovereign king;
    So should we you, if you should be our king.

Richard    If I should be? I had rather be a pedlar.
    Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof.

Elizabeth    As little joy, my lord, as you suppose
    You should enjoy, were you this country's king,
    As little joy you may suppose in me
    That I enjoy, being the queen thereof.

Margaret    [Aside.] As little joy enjoys the queen thereof;
    For I am she, and altogether joyless.
    I can no longer hold me patient.
    [Advancing.] Hear me, you wrangling pirates that fall out
    In sharing that which you have pilled from me-
    Which of you trembles not that looks on me?
    If not that I am queen you bow like subjects,
    Yet that by you deposed you quake like rebels.
    [To RICHARD.] Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away.

Richard    Foul wrinkled witch, what mak'st thou in my sight?

Margaret    But repetition of what thou hast marred,
    That will I make before I let thee go.

Richard    Wert thou not banishd on pain of death?

Margaret    I was, but I do find more pain in banishment
    Than death can yield me here by my abode.
    A husband and a son thou ow'st to me;
    [To ELIZABETH.] And thou, a kingdom;
                                [To All.]    all of you, allegiance.
    This sorrow that I have by right is yours,
    And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.

Richard    The curse my noble father laid on thee
    When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper,
    And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes,
    And then to dry them gav'st the duke a clout
    Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland-
    His curses then, from bitterness of soul
    Denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee;
    And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.

Elizabeth    So just is God, to right the innocent.

Lord Hastings    O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
    And the most merciless that e'er was heard of.

Rivers    Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.

Dorset    No man but prophesied revenge for it.

Buckingham    Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.

Margaret    What, were you snarling all before I came,
    Ready to catch each other by the throat,
    And turn you all your hatred now on me?
    Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven
    That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death,
    Their kingdom's loss, my woeful banishment,
    Should all but answer for that peevish brat?
    Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
    Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses-
    Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,
    As ours by murder, to make him a king.
    Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,
    For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,
    Die in his youth by like untimely violence.
    Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
    Outlive thy glory like my wretched self.
    Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's death,
    And see another, as I see thee now,
    Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine.
    Long die thy happy days before thy death,
    And after many lengthened hours of grief,
    Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen.
    Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by,
    And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
    Was stabbed with bloody daggers. God, I pray Him,
    That none of you may live his natural age,
    But by some unlooked accident cut off.

Richard    Have done thy charm, thou hateful withered hag.

Margaret    And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
    If heaven have any grievous plague in store
    Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
    O let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
    And then hurl down their indignation
    On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace.
    The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul.
    Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
    And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.
    No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
    Unless it be while some tormenting dream
    Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.
    Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog,
    Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity
    The slave of nature and the son of hell,
    Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb,
    Thou loathd issue of thy father's loins,
    Thou rag of honour, thou detested-

Richard    Margaret.

Margaret                Richard.

Richard                            Ha?

Margaret                                I call thee not.

Richard    I cry thee mercy then, for I did think
    That thou hadst called me all these bitter names.

Margaret    Why so I did, but looked for no reply.
    O, let me make the period to my curse.

Richard    'Tis done by me, and ends in 'Margaret'.

Elizabeth    Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.

Margaret    Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune,
    Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottled spider
    Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?
    Fool, fool, thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself.
    The day will come that thou shalt wish for me
    To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-backed toad.

Lord Hastings    False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,
    Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.

Margaret    Foul shame upon you; you have all moved mine.

Rivers    Were you well served you would be taught your duty.

Margaret    To serve me well you all should do me duty,
    Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects.
    O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty.

Dorset    Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.

Margaret    Peace, Master Marquis, you are malapert:
    Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.
    O, that your young nobility could judge
    What 'twere to lose it and be miserable.
    They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;
    And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.

Richard    Good counsel, marry! Learn it, learn it, Marquis.

Dorset    It touches you, my lord, as much as me.

Richard    Ay, and much more; but I was born so high:
    Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,
    And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

Margaret    And turns the sun to shade, alas, alas!
    Witness my son, now in the shade of death,
    Whose bright outshining beams thy cloudy wrath
    Hath in eternal darkness folded up.
    Your aery buildeth in our aery's nest-
    O God that seest it, do not suffer it:
    As it is won with blood, lost be it so.

Buckingham    Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity.

Margaret    Urge neither charity nor shame to me.
    Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
    And shamefully my hopes by you are butchered.
    My charity is outrage, life my shame;
    And in that shame still live my sorrows' rage.

Buckingham    Have done, have done!

Margaret    O princely Buckingham, I'll kiss thy hand
    In sign of league and amity with thee.
    Now fair befall thee and thy noble house:
    Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,
    Nor thou within the compass of my curse.

Buckingham    Nor no one here; for curses never pass
    The lips of those that breathe them in the air.

Margaret    I will not think but they ascend the sky,
    And there awake God's gentle sleeping peace.
    O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog:
    Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,
    His venom tooth will rankle to the death.
    Have not to do with him, beware of him;
    Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
    And all their ministers attend on him.

Richard    What doth she say, my lord of Buckingham?

Buckingham    Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.

Margaret    What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel,
    And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?
    O, but remember this another day,
    - When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow-
    And say "Poor Margaret was a prophetess".
    Live each of you the subjects to his hate,
    And he to yours, and all of you to God's.
                                                        [Exit.
Buckingham    My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.

Rivers    And so doth mine. I muse why she's at liberty.

Richard    I cannot blame her. By God's holy Mother,
    She hath had too much wrong; and I repent
    My part thereof that I have done to her.

Elizabeth    I never did her any, to my knowledge.

Richard    Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.
    I was too hot to do somebody good,
    That is too cold in thinking of it now.
    Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid:
    He is franked up to fatting for his pains-
    God pardon them that are the cause thereof.

Rivers    A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,
    To pray for them that have done scathe to us.

Richard    So do I ever - [Aside.] being well advised;
    For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.

                              Enter CATESBY.

Catesby    Madam, his majesty doth call for you;
    And for your grace; and you, my gracious lords.

Elizabeth    Catesby, I come. Lords, will you go with me?

Rivers    We wait upon your grace.
                                                [Exeunt all but RICHARD.

Richard    I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
    The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
    I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
    Clarence, who I indeed have cast in darkness,
    I do beweep to many simple gulls,
    - Namely, to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham-
    And tell them 'tis the queen and her allies
    That stir the king against the duke my brother.
    Now they believe it, and withal whet me
    To be revenged on Rivers, Dorset, Grey.
    But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture
    Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;
    And thus I clothe my naked villainy
    With odd old ends stol'n forth of Holy Writ,
    And seem a saint when most I play the devil.

                           Enter two MURDERERS.

    But soft, here come my executioners.
    How now, my hardy, stout, resolvd mates!
    Are you now going to dispatch this thing?

1st Murderer    We are, my lord, and come to have the warrant,
    That we may be admitted where he is.

Richard    Well thought upon; I have it here about me.
                                                        [Giving the warrant.
    When you have done, repair to Crosby Place.
    But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,
    Withal obdurate; do not hear him plead;
    For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps
    May move your hearts to pity if you mark him.

2nd Murderer    Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to prate:
    Talkers are no good doers. Be assured
    We go to use our hands, and not our tongues.

Richard    Your eyes drop millstones when fools' eyes fall tears.
    I like you, lads. About your business straight.
    Go, go, dispatch.

1st & 2nd
Murderers                            We will, my noble lord.
                                                        [Exeunt.